Dolphin Browser is a great free alternative to the built in web browser on your android device. It offers a great user interface with a ton of features such as tabbed windows and depending on the device multi-touch and many more. Where the built in browser is lacking dolphin more than makes up for it.

You can find Dolphin Browser on the Market here.

Dolphin Browser is a very fluid browser that I have found to be a very fast way to get around the net. There are plenty of built in features in this application that you can find out about right here. Just so you know why it may look different if you are opening it for the first time, I have the full screen view here, you can get to this by double clicking on any white space within your page.

Multi -Touch zooming/ multi - tabs

Mulit-touch is apparently the only good feature on a competing device, and within dolphin you have that feature too. Depending on your phone (hero, droid, nexus are a few) you have the ability to do the pinch zoom in and out by using two fingers on the screen to either move in or out of the screen. I did find the zooming to be touchy at times, sometimes when it zoomed out so far i couldn't find the page but it is relatively good.

Tabbed browsing is really cool. In the below image you can see the screen I am on however at the bottom of the screen there is a grey line and a blue line. The blue line is the current tab I am on. Once you have more than one tab open you can simply swipe left or right to get to another tab. This is a very fast way to have multiple tabs open at the same time and you do not have to hit any buttons to get to them.

If the web page you are viewing has a horizontal scroll bar you have to scroll all the way to the side before the tab switches so it works very well in combination with the multi touch support and wide web pages.

Easy Navigation

Dolphin has an easy way to provide additional navigation options by a long click on the screen you get this little context menu. Don't raise you finger when you get it but simple move your finger over the option and release. You can do zooming, page options and gestures through this handle little interface.

Gestures

Gestures are a way you can control the browser by just entering a shape. You can get to this screen through clicking on the menu button on your phone and you get the first screen you see here. Then you can just enter in a shape as a continuous line to execute a command. In this case I am doing an 'N' for a new tab. I will be discussing tabbed browsing in a bit.

Available Gestures

Here are the list of available commands on the browser that you can associate a gesture with. Dolphin comes with some already setup by default but you can create your own.  I would recommend that you make your shape distinct from other available ones as the gesture reading is not always perfect. The phone does have to try to match the shape you draw to the closest shape it has on the gesture screen. So make them as different as possible for better results.

I created the book mark one that you see below, which I drew as the right side of the letter 'B'.

Create a gesture

You can setup a new gesture by clicking on any of the available commands in the gesture screen then you can simply create the shape you want in the same interface.

Bookmarks

Through the bookmarks interface there is a wealth of things to do (which is why I would definitely recommend you create a bookmark gesture). You can not only manage your bookmarks but see most visited sites, have quick access to google services, access webpages you had setup to read later, check out del.icio.us, and also interact with the Dolphin community.

Menu

Here are some of the things you can do in the more section of the menu bar. As you can see there are plenty of fast ways to move around the application.

Conclusion

This is an application you have to try, seriously! It is that good. I found the built in browser to be cumbersome and it doesn't lend itself well to quick navigation without having to press too many buttons. Gestures is the name of the game here with Dolphin and I do not think I can do without them at this point. If that was all this application had I would still say it is a must have but then it has multi touch, multi tabbing, the very easy navigation and the very very good bookmarking sections and it really just blows the built in browser away.

I suppose what I am getting at is:

DOWNLOAD THIS APP IF YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY

There is also a paid download if you want to avoid the ads within some of the screens (no ads on the main browser itself).

For more information on this application please visit the developer's website.

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